Basse-Normandie (Lower Normandy) is a region of France. It was created in 1956, when the Normandy region was divided into Basse-Normandie and Haute-Normandie. The region includes three départements, Calvados, Manche and Orne. It covers 10,857 square miles, 3.2 percent of the surface area of France. Regions of Lower Normandy include the Cotentin Peninsula and La Hague, Pays d'Auge, and the Bessin. The traditional region of Normandy, with an integral history reaching back to the 10th century, was divided into Basse-Normandie and Haute-Normandie ("Upper Normandy").
During the Roman era, the region was divided into several different city-states. That of Vieux-la-Romaine was excavated in the seventeenth century, revealing numerous structures and vestiges bearing testimony to the prosperity of the Caen region which was ravaged by war, when in 1346 King Edward III of England led his army against it, hoping to loot the town, which was the richest in Normandy at that time and the Battle of Crecy, near Crécy, in northern France and was one of the most important battles of the Hundred Years' War-the beginning of the end of chivalry. The Orne flows through Caen, which sits 10 km away from the Channel.
The Basse-Normandie region was conquered by the Franks from the southern Netherlands and settled in northern Gaul in the 5th century. From Austrasia and Neustria, the Sicambri, a Scythian or Cimmerian tribes had changed their name to "Franks" in 11 BC. Old French evolved into Old Low Franconian (also called Old Dutch) in the Low Countries from the 7th century and was replaced by Old French further south. The period of the migrations have similarly suggested that the Frankish Confederacy emerged from the unification of various earlier, smaller Germanic groups, who inhabited the Rhine valley and lands immediately to the east, in the area arising from the war between Rome and the Marcomanni beginning in 166. A region in the north-east of the modern-day Netherlands – north of the erstwhile Roman border – bears the name Salland, and may have received that name from the Salians. The Franks thus became the first Germanic people who permanently settled within Roman territory. While the Rhine under control by Roman Gaul to Visigothic Aquitaine, the region roughly corresponding to present-day Flanders and the Netherlands south of the rivers remains a Germanic-speaking region to this day.
Neustria and Austrasia re-united briefly on a few occasions. Thus Neustria formed the western part of the kingdom of the Franks under the rule of the Merovingian dynasty during the sixth to eighth centuries. The territory of Neustria originated in 511, made up of the regions from Aquitaine to the English Channel, approximating most of the north of present-day France, with Paris and Soissons as its main cities. In 687 Pippin of Herstal, mayor of the palace of the king of Austrasia, defeated the tenacious Neustrians at Tertry and united Austrasia and Neustria. Pippin's descendants, the Carolingians, continued to rule the two realms as mayors. Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy then became united under one authority and the names "Neustria" and "Austrasia" gradually disappeared. Normandy had no natural frontiers and was previously merely an administrative unit. Viking settlers, who had begun arriving in the 880s, were divided between a small colony in Upper (or eastern) Normandy and a larger one in Lower (or western) Normandy.
In the 9th century, the Norman or "Northmen" conquests devastated the region. Originally they derived from the indigenous population of Neustria and Vikings originating in present day Denmark and Norway. They began to occupy the northern area of France now known as Normandy in the latter half of the 9th century. In 911, Charles the Simple, king of France, granted the invaders the small lower Seine or "sacred" area, which expanded over time to become the Duchy of Normandy.
In 933 the Channel Islands, formerly under the control of the kingdom, then Duchy of Brittany were annexed by the Duchy of Normandy. Geographically, Normandy was approximately the same region as the old church province of Rouen or Neustria. It had no natural frontiers and was previously merely an administrative unit. Rouen, the capital of the Haute-Normandie or Upper Normandy region, was the seate of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages and was the chief city of the Secunda Provincia Lugdunensis under Constantine. In the 5th century it became the seate of the bishopric and later a capital of Neustria. During the Hundred Years' War, on January 19, 1419, Rouen surrendered to Henry V of England who made Normandy a part of England.
